Lawsuits generally originate with the obstinate and the ignorant, but they do not end with them; and that lawyer was right who left all his money to the support of an asylum for fools and lunatics, saying that from such he got it, and to such he would bequeath it.

No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion.

The principle of asceticism never was, nor ever can be, consistently pursued by any living creature. Let but one tenth part of the inhabitants of the earth pursue it consistently, and in a day's time they will have turned it into a Hell.

Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being? The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes.

Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never to be the system of a regular government.

Prose is when all the lines except the last go on to the end. Poetry is when some of them fall short of it.

Reputation is the road to power